If Team McCain needed some "bulletin-board material"—the kind of outrageous taunt from the opposition a coach will pin up in the locker-room to inspire his troops—they got if from Charlie Cook tonight. So confident is the pollster of an Obama victory, he's proclaimed that if McCain wins, he'll go to work bagging groceries or behind a fast-food counter.Cook was a guest on this evening's Race for the White House. It was in looking at the Electoral College map with host David Gregory that he made his super-sized pledge.
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CHARLIE COOK: Three weeks ago, we would have said John McCain would have to run the table to win this election. Now, he can run the table and still come up short. He's gotta go find something on other tables.Note: For the record, Cook attributed what he sees as the dramatic change in McCain's fortunes to the onset of the current financial crisis.
DAVID GREGORY: You think at this point, you wrote it would take divine intervention for him to pull this off.
COOK: If we were talking two weeks ago, I would have said, well, I think Obama's gonna win, unless there's some huge international event or something. And we're kind of past that point now. If McCain wins, and Senator McCain is a terrific man and served our country well. But if he wins, I'm going to be asking "paper or plastic" or "do you want fries with that?"